Alkaline Water and Water Ionizers Buying Guide

Alkaline water for the human body

We all know that the human body is composed of 70% water and that maintaining a healthy level of hydration is essential to the proper functioning of our body, cellular repair, to flush toxins from our body and our general overall health.

We lose several liters of water each day just performing normal bodily functions like sweating and urinating and that water has to be replaced.

The human body can survive for more than 30 days without food but if you go without water for just 3 entire days it can lead to serious health problems and even death in some cases. If you don’t drink enough water you will die – that’s just a biological fact.

Even just normal daily dehydration is enough to cause problems if you don’t rehydrate on a regular basis during the day. Most people drink coffee for the 3 pm slump where they should really be drinking a liter of water – caffeine actually just dehydrates you more.

The same with fizzy sodas because most of them are laced with caffeine. How do you know if you’re dehydrated? The first sign of thirst means that you’re already in the early stages of being dehydrated.

Also, the color of your urine is a dead give away because your urine should be almost clear when you’re properly hydrated. If you’re dehydrated however then your urine is going to be a much darker color – the darker the color the more dehydrated you are.

In an ideal situation, you should be drinking between 2 and 4 liters of water each day to stay properly hydrated – again the vast majority of people understand this and do their best to stick to this health rule.

What most people don’t know is that the quality of the water you drink is just as important as the quantity of water that you drink. Not all water is equally valuable to your health and some water can actually cause more harm than good.

Basically, the water you’re drinking may be too acidic in nature and this is where the problems start. Your body maintains a careful balancing system known as the pH balance – first introduced to the world by the Danish chemist Soren Lauritz Sorensen in 1909.

This is a measure of how alkaline or acidic something is and is rated from 0 (extremely acid) to 14 (extremely alkaline or basic).

Normally your blood would have a pH value of slightly more than 7 which makes it slightly acidic and under normal circumstances, this isn’t – your body physiology is perfectly normal.

The problem is when your blood becomes more acidic than it should be – this can lead to a condition called acidosis.

What is Acidosis?

If your kidneys don’t have enough clean and pH balanced water to clear the toxins from your system it can lead to an increase in the acidity of your blood – a condition known as acidosis. Is this condition serious? Surely your blood becoming slightly more acidic isn’t that serious? Some of the side effects of acidosis are headaches, confusion, drowsiness, muscular weakness, respiratory problems, heart problems, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea and even loss of consciousness and coma. Acidosis is a very serious problem which can be fatal if left untreated.

The scary thing is that your blood acidity level doesn’t need to drop down to a pH of 4 or 5 for the worst effects of acidosis (coma and death) to appear. As a matter of a fact, a pH level of 6.9 in your blood can be enough to cause this process to start. This is even scarier when you remember that your normal blood pH level is around about 7.3! Each point of pH your blood decreases by is basically a 10x increase in acidity.

So how do all these acids get into your body? If you look at our modern diet it’s loaded with acidic foods like:

* Sugar

* Alcohol

* Coffee

* Bread

* Butter

* Other processed foods.

Very little of what we eat today hasn’t been processed in some way and these additives can directly lead to your blood becoming more acidic. If you enjoy eating citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons, limes or grapefruit don’t panic though – the body can eliminate citric acid pretty easily.

What’s crucial to maintaining the pH balance is not just drinking water but drinking the right type of water. The water you drink should have a very high (or alkaline) level of 9 or 10, be ionized and also be free of fluoride wherever possible. Most water treatment plants add fluoride to their water supply as a way of preventing tooth decay in people but excessive levels of fluoride in your body will increase the acidity of your blood.

This is the exact opposite of what you expect to happen from drinking pH balanced tap water. Studies have shown that pH balanced, ionized water is beneficial for your body and can actually slow the aging process.

And anyone who has tasted pure water that’s never been recycled will tell you it tastes totally different. People who drink from cold, fresh mountain streams or even better a glacial stream will tell you that they actually feel energized and alive after drinking the water. Compare this to the effect that most bottled water has on people – they feel sluggish and even bloated after it.

On a personal note, I had to stop drinking one brand of bottled water because it was causing severe acid reflux problems for me – it wasn’t as pure as the label claimed it seems.

So if you can’t get pH balanced, ionized water from a tap or from the bottled water where can you get it?

You need to use a water ionizer to separate the bad water from the good and leave you with pure, natural and healthy drinking water.

There are two ways of ionizing your water – water additives and a physical water ionizing device. Both of these will produce the much-needed hydroxyl ions that are necessary for a healthy body.

The additive type of ionizer just means that you add a specific number of drops of the ionizer to distilled water and hey presto you have pH 9 or 10 water to drink and enjoy. This type of solution is very cost effective (costing about $30 per bottle) and you can treat several gallons of water with just one bottle of an additive based water ionizer.

But you’re going to need to buy several bottles of this type of this, type of treatment at once to make sure you never run out plus it’s a recurring expense for your household.

The water ionizer units are a little different though because it’s an electronic unit that’s attached directly to your kitchen water supply.

You’re not going to have to tear your house apart to fit one either – they’re only about the size of a toaster. Because they’re connected directly to the water supply the ionization and purification of the water are happening at the source so you don’t need to remember to add anything to your water – just turn on the tap and drink.

The benefits of actually buying and fitting a water ionizer unit are that it’s a single cost and you have the added peace of mind of not having to top up your ionized water supply.

Believe it or not, this type of ionizer has been in use in Japan and all over Asia for the last 30 years or so. It’s only now that the “modern” Western world has started to embrace just how important clean water is to your body. Water is literally the fuel that drives our bodies each day.

If you look up the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto on YouTube on the effects of different types of energy inputs on the water you’ll get a much clearer idea of just how important the type of water we put into our body is.

Not only that but you’ll see the incredibly positive (and visual) effect that energized water as – you’ll never look at a glass of water the same way again. And you’ll definitely reconsider the value of drinking ionized water.

So what are the benefits of drinking pH balanced ionized water?

* You maintain a healthy pH level in your body of 7.3.

* Ionized water combats free radicals in the body.

* You top up essential minerals in your body.

* The hydration levels in your body will be at optimum levels.

* Your body will be better able to detoxify itself.

* You will be more alert and have more energy.

* Cellular repair and detoxification can happen at a faster rate.

* The aging process can be slowed down dramatically.

* Have an overall feeling of improved health that you’ve never experienced before.

Combat Health Conditions As amazing as it might seem pH balanced ionized water can help you combat a huge range of health issues and conditions. As we stated above this type of water helps combat free radicals in the body; these are rogue molecules which can sometimes be of benefit to the body but more often than not can cause harm.

They literally “steal” energy from other molecules in your body and in by doing that turn these otherwise healthy molecules into even more free radicals that then go swarming through your system and multiplying. When this happens dangerous diseases and other health conditions start to appear.

Being properly hydrated is important to your health but being hydrated with the right type of water (ionized and pH balanced) is even more critical.

Drinking ionized water can help with weight loss, it can help reduce the pain from arthritis, it can help you have clearer skin and reduce or even cure acne problems and you can reduce or even remove those age spots on your hands and arms.

Ongoing studies have shown that having a higher pH level in your blood can help reduce the risk or cancer and help combat cancer if it’s already there – tumors have real trouble trying to survive in blood that’s highly alkaline. Even more recent studies have shown a direct correlation between drinking ionized alkaline water with a reduction in the amount of insulin required by diabetes patients by around 50%. In some cases, patients have even been able to reduce their insulin requirements to almost zero but never attempt a change or reduction in your medication without consulting your family doctor first – especially with a condition as potentially life-threatening as diabetes.

Who Can Benefit From A Water Ionizer?

If you look at anyone in your home – animal, plant or human they can benefit from drinking this type of water. For your children, you’re making absolutely sure that they’re drinking clean and healthy water that’s free of toxins present in normal tap water that might harm them.

For people who are getting on in years ionized water can help them stay healthy for longer – there is research to back up the fact that pH balanced ionized water actually slows the aging process and the aging of internal bodily organs.

If you have pets they’re going to benefit from this wonderful water too. Dogs and cats are used to drinking naturally occurring water from streams, ponds and rain runoff.

When we give them a bowl of water that contains fluoride and other harmful chemicals we’re not doing them any favors. For older dogs and cats lots of clean water is especially important for proper kidney function and to help prevent joint pain.

If you have a green finger and like to keep plants around the house then they’re going to drink up this water like you won’t believe. Plants, like us, are mostly composed of water so the better the quality of water they receive the more beautiful they’ll bloom, the quicker they’ll grow and the more delicious your vegetables or herbs will taste.

Making the change to using ionized and pH balanced water is something that everybody needs to make. More and more doctors and medical practitioners are recommending ionized water because of the incredible results they’ve seen with their own patients.

The benefits are incredible and the costs involved are minor when compared to the health benefits you, your family, your pets and your plants will receive in return.

Alkaline Water, ORP Explained

Many people do not understand anything when it comes to water alkalinity. This is mainly because people are not keen on watching their health which in turn leads to spending a fortune on medication. It is therefore important to understand alkaline water and how it affects your overall health.

A negative Oxidation Reduction Potential which is commonly known as ORP is what makes alkaline water good for anyone’s health. This is mainly because this water contains the right amount of oxygen that is required by the body to function normally for you to maintain good health.

ORP is considered to be energy that is available but not in use. It is always ready to be put to use at any given time. This can be explained in the same way as a balloon that has a lot of air inside since the air pressure will remain in the balloon as long as it is closed and it can also be measured.

However, when the balloon is opened, the air is released and the potential energy that was available in it becomes kinetic energy. The ORP can be measured using an ORP meter and it is the slightest voltage that is found in water that is usually measured.

When the measurement of the ORP is taking place it is basically the availability of oxidizing and reducing agents that are being checked. If the water has a high pH then it means that it has more reducing agents which in turn results in a negative ORP.

If however, it has a low pH then it means that it has more oxidizing agents resulting in a positive ORP. It is not advisable for the body to have a lot of oxidizing agents because it causes the body to become weaker because the oxidation takes away electrons from the place that they are available.

This is what makes water that has a negative ORP which basically has more reducing agents the best for consumption. The reducing agents donate electrons to the body. Most tap waters that people drink usually have high oxidizing agents. This means that these waters are not healthy for human consumption.

The more people continue drinking these waters the more oxidizing agents they give to their bodies which in turn results in deterioration of health. Most bottled waters have low pH which means that they are reducing agents and therefore they are perfect for consumption. There are however some that have high ORPs.

There are a number of factors that result in the variations of water alkalinity and ORP. These factors include the source of the water and the natural mineral content that it has. Water comes from different sources which makes the variation much wider. Another factor is the amount of voltage that is applied to the water when it was being electrolyzed.

There is also the factor of the rate of flow through the water cell of the ionizer. With these simple facts in mind, it is important to ensure that whenever you are drinking water, you consider the alkalinity of the water and the ORP of the water.